Build Your Resort Like a Stonecutter

“Go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two. And I know it was not that blow that did it—but all that had gone before.” - Jacob Riis

Have you ever heard of the latent potential principle?

If you’ve been working hard on your resort but feel like you’re going nowhere, it may be what you need to hear.

The latent potential principle is the idea that the outcomes we desire often lag behind the effort we invest. We might work on something for months, or years, and see no results, only for everything to suddenly click into place.

Take a look at the quote that opened this dispatch. 

The stonecutter swings 100 times with no visible progress, until success arrives on the 101st. Nothing is special about the 101st swing, or any of them for that matter.

What matters is the accumulation of effort in the face of no visible progress. 

If you’re working on a big project like a glamping development, most of the time, it will feel like you’re going nowhere. But, if you stick with it long enough, you’ll be surprised at how quickly it all comes together in the end.

Here’s how it worked for me.

The Posh Outdoors Boom

I wrote on LinkedIn this week that “Posh Outdoors is on fire.”

And we really are. At Skyridge Glamping (our first location), we have:

• 88% occupancy for June, with an ADR of $504 USD

• 64% occupancy for July - December already

• Total booking receipts of $359,178 USD since opening the booking calendar in May

• We’ve just closed a $500k private placement

If we’re a stonecutter, we’ve certainly cracked open the rock.

But we spent years swinging without making the slightest dent. The endless planning; the failed attempt at institutional funding; the 13-month community raise; the 3-month launch campaign.

All of it was progress, but none of it was visible. We remained a company with no units in operation, and $0 in revenue.

All of this ‘success’ (I use quotation marks because there’s a hell of a lot of work left to do) has come in the space of three months. We placed units on the ground in April, took bookings in May, and closed the extra investment in June. 

The road to get here took over my life for years. The success came in the blink of an eye.

What to Take From the Latent Potential Principle

Like the stonecutter, you simply have to keep chipping away at your resort. 

Don’t make the same mistake I did. I tied up a lot of my self-worth on getting Posh off the ground. When things inevitably got delayed, it felt like my whole life had been delayed.

Simply focus on the resort, and accept the fact that it will take longer than planned.

You also need to get comfortable with working while nobody is watching. The brutal truth is most people don’t care about what you’re working on until it’s done. So don’t expect people to be applauding your every move. You’ll have to rely on your own motivation and discipline to reach your desired outcome.

One day, if you execute right, you’ll burst onto the scene and everybody will be applauding you. It just takes a lot of chipping away.

📰 The Posh Report

A lot of my time lately has been spent working with Team Skyridge Glamping on marketing stuff.

We’ve just launched a new website (don’t be too harsh, there’s lots of work still to do), and we’re building out our influencer and content marketing programs.

Like the stonecutter, we’re chipping away bit by bit, but we’re getting there. The aim is to have all these systems running smoothly in the next couple of months.

We’ve also had some exciting developments on a second location, but that’s for another day…